By Carol Hiltner | President, Altai Mir University
When I wrote last, our Altai project leader Svetlana Katynova and her colleague Zhanna An were gathering the resources to make video presentations of Altai legends that Svetlana had documented by interviewing Altai elders.
They were in the process of contracting with some of Altai's world-famous vocal artists to tell the stories in Russian and Altai languages. Two of these recordings have now been made.
The visual part of the video is being produced with a remarkable process called "sand painting." The images are formed by the artist moving around sand that has been spread across a back-lit screen. The fluidity and expressiveness of the medium is delightful. A screen shot of a work-in-progress is shown above. The artist's hand is visible in the lower right quadrant, making the crane's wings.
Svetlana has received some government funding for this project, but unfortunately not enough to do all of the legends that they would like to present. Thank you for your contribution, which gets our team incrementally closer to this important documentation.
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